


every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own

by spookyfoot



Series: in pain and sickness, it would still be dear [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, M/M, anxiety gothic, did u expect this series to be linear i'm sorry, it's a nice day for a whiiiiiteeeeeee wedddingggggggggg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 14:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13549140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyfoot/pseuds/spookyfoot
Summary: Yuuri wonders how Victor sees the years stretch before him. When Yuuri tried he found his mind went unnervingly blank. Yuuri still cannot grasp the idea that Victor insists Yuuri call him by his first name. The fears sit like lead on the tip of his tongue, threatening to spill out at any moment.“Goodnight,” Yuuri says, all but fleeing into his room.The night is far from good. It is a creeping thing that hides in the shadows of Yuuri’s bedchamber, slipping between the creaks and sighs of the house so that it might grab him as its own the moment he shuts his eyes.When dawn spills across his ceiling, the room’s shadows retreat to their hiding places but Yuuri’s mind remains dark and dim, clouded by the shades that somehow snuck past his watch.





	every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seventhstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/gifts).



> the promised pt.2! now to write the bits in between ahahahaha ahah aha ha ha haa......
> 
> anyways happy birthday again, nuri! <3
> 
> title from Jane Eyre

On the night before Yuuri’s wedding he sees shadows everywhere. Victor walks him to the door of his bedchamber. He rubs soft circles on the inside of Yuuri’s wrist as they ascend the main staircase hand in hand. Victor is humming under his breath, a tune that Yuuri cannot quite make out, no matter how he strains to hear it. There is a gentle pressure against his palm, the warm embrace of Victor’s hand against his. When Yuuri pulls his hand away, his own palm is damp with sweat.

“I do not know how you expect me to wait until tomorrow to share your bed, I doubt I will dream of anything else tonight.”

“You have lived this long without me lying beside you,” Yuuri cannot follow Victor on his flights of fantasy, there are too many things about Victor he does not know and does not know that he will ever learn. He will undoubtedly stare at the ceiling tonight, wondering when Victor will realize that he is making a grave mistake, or if Victor has settled for an innkeeper’s son in want of a body to keep his bed warm.

“Empty and desolate years I would prefer not to remember.”

Yuuri wonders how Victor sees the years stretch before him. When Yuuri tried he found his mind went unnervingly blank. Yuuri still cannot grasp the idea that Victor insists Yuuri call him by his first name. The fears sit like lead on the tip of his tongue, threatening to spill out at any moment.

“Goodnight,” Yuuri says, all but fleeing into his room.

The night is far from good. It is a creeping thing that hides in the shadows of Yuuri’s bedchamber, slipping between the creaks and sighs of the house so that it might grab him as its own the moment he shuts his eyes.

When dawn spills across his ceiling, the room’s shadows retreat to their hiding places but Yuuri’s mind remains dark and dim, clouded by the shades that somehow snuck past his watch.

He is still lying in bed when Mila, Victor’s cousin, opens the door. “You’re still in bed?”

Mila, who had arrived a week earlier to help them prepare for the wedding, who was there to help Yuuri prepare for the wedding. Perhaps to dress him up as well as she could so that he and Victor would not look so much like a mismatch once Yuuri had joined him at the altar.

“Is there somewhere else I should be?” Hours until the wedding yet he had already misstepped.

Mila frowns, “Victor sent me, he thought you might like help getting ready. Though I must admit, I did not expect to find a blank canvas.”

Yuuri feels as though a swarm of bees has taken up residence behind his eyes and their constant buzzing drowns out all other sound.

“Yuuri?” Yuuri flinches. He had given her permission to call him by his Christian name, but hearing it fall from her lips, expected intimacy before the vows were even read only caused the buzzing to swell louder.

“Yes?”

“I asked if you’d like to eat luncheon before or after you bathe,” Mila says. Yuuri bristles. Her words are delicate, soft spoken, as though the pressure of any one of them might cause him to crack.

“After.”

“I’ll let Leah know she should bring a tray up when you’re done.”

“Thank you.”

When Mila leans in to wrap him in a hesitant embrace, Yuuri cannot relax. His body remains stiff in her arms.

“We’re so pleased to welcome you to our family,” she says, frowning as she pulls back. Her words ring hollow.

Yuuri lets Leah draw him a bath and then dismisses her. He lowers himself into the scalding water, and his skin aches from more than just the temperature; unlike his home, this water smells of nothing but the rose scented bath oil Victor had somehow snuck into his room.

He stays in the bath until long after the water has gone cold.

“Yuuri, are you well?”

 _No_ , Yuuri thinks, _I am not_. But although he is an innkeeper’s son, Yuuri knows enough about the ins and outs of social decorum to know that is not an acceptable answer.

“I will be out shortly,” he says. When he emerges from the bathroom Mila does not comment on the fact that he did not answer her question. He cannot tell if it is out of deference or disinterest.

“Victor did not know which you would prefer,” Mila says, gesturing at a sea of lace and silk.

Yuuri chooses blindly, expending more of his energy on suppressing the tremble in his hands than which outfit will look best with his coloring. A sow in silk and pearls is still a pig.

He desperately wants to find Victor, to find peace in the soothing circle of his arms, yet his mind derides the very notion—what could he possibly possess above all others that would keep Victor his?

Yuuri does not remember getting dressed, nor does he remember the hum of conversation that surrounds him as he does. All he can feel is the sense of foreboding, like a sticky, dark molasses, seeping into the all of his limbs and rooting him to the spot.

When Yuuri descends the main stairs, Victor is waiting for him. Yuuri does not think he’s ever seen Victor look so handsome, though simmering beneath his joy is an unmistakable air of impatience.

“Yuuri, you look—” Victor pauses mid-sentence, perhaps because he could not find the words, perhaps because he’d thought better of whatever he’d been about to say to Yuuri, lest it offend him. He moves on without bothering to finish the thought, but Yuuri hangs there on the verge of his unfinished sentiment as though it were the edge of a cliff before free fall.

“I did not think it would take this long—never mind, the carriage is ready to depart once the ceremony is over,” Victor says.

“You do not wish to celebrate with our guests?”

Victor’s eyes hold some emotion that Yuuri cannot read, and Victor’s smile is one he has never seen before. Yuuri does not know if this is a mask or the man beneath. The last time he found himself unable to read Victor was the day in the library, when they’d—

“I do not wish to celebrate with anyone other than you,” Victor says, taking Yuuri’s hand in his.

“Your family came a long way,” Yuuri says. His own family was unable to leave the inn unattended.

“And they will not let me forget it, so I am sure they will take it upon themselves to stay a while. I would not trade your company for theirs.”

“I see,” Yuuri lies.

“You always do. You must think me uncharitable, but I do not want anyone to lay eyes on you aside from me,” Victor says, matter of fact, as though this were some shared plan they had devised together. Yuuri does not remember attending nor being asked to such a meeting.

“Are you ready to begin the ceremony?” Father Benedict, the clergyman asks. Yuuri did not notice him approaching over the buzzing swarming between his ears.  

Victor hurries them down the aisle. His stride is longer than Yuuri’s and Yuuri trips over his own feet as well as the train of his gown so that he might keep up. If he falls now, will Victor decide to do away with the wedding all together?

The moment the thought enters Yuuri’s head it is impossible to dislodge.

The aisle stretches out before him, far longer than it was just moments earlier.

Yuuri almost trips but Victor catches him by the elbow, settling him back onto his feet. Yuuri prays that no one had a chance to notice his blunder.

At the pew, Yuuri hears Father Benedict’s words slide over his ears like water over a stone—unceasing, and not leaving a trace except to carve the stone smaller each second it passes.

“Are these parts of the ceremony truly necessary,” Victor’s voice breaks the haze.

“They are tradition.”

“But does reciting them make us anymore married than we would be without them?”

“I cannot faithfully say they do, but I also cannot faithfully say they do not.”

“That is more than enough for my conscience, I beg you—proceed to the vows.”

“Sir, I must protest that this behavior is highly irregular!”

“And I must protest that I do not care!”

As Victor’s proclamation echoes through the hall, a series of loud crashes sounds at the back of the hall. The doors slam open.

“Victor!” the man bellows. Victor pales, and Yuuri realizes that this is the moment he has been waiting for since the night prior—perhaps since he was foolish enough to believe he could enter into an equal relationship with Victor at all. Part of him has been waiting for this moment since the moment Victor’s relatives set foot in Thornfield Hall.

He flees.

“Yuuri!” Victor calls after him, but after the stranger’s exclamation, Yuuri does not have enough strength left in him to listen.

By some miracle, he makes it to his room without encountering anyone. Perhaps the universe feels it owes him that much.

He pauses in his attempt to throw open his wardrobe as the motion reminds him of the very same interruption that sent him running. He pulls clothes from his armoire with little care as to what and why; so long as he can clothe himself long enough to return to his parent’s inn—his home—it is enough.

Yuuri’s room falls between the grand staircase that leads to the marble foyer, and the mundane staircase, foot worn from servant running between the master’s living quarters and the oven-warmed kitchen below. There is something fitting that he should be caught between the resplendent staircase and the unsightly one.

There is a long racket from the smaller staircase and then Yuuri hears Yuri’s voice. “Do not follow me, Victor. Clearly he does not wish to see you if he fled from you at the altar.”

That is not entirely true, for he does with to see Victor, but the rushed vows, the aborted phrases, the plans Yuuri had no part in making, all of them jostle the still waters of Yuuri’s mind, stirring up sediment he thought had sunk to the bottom—perhaps for good—not so long ago.

“I just want to see my husband,” Victor says, his voice more of a whine than a true demand.  

“He is not your husband yet, and it does not appear he has any desire to fill that role in the future.”

“Yuri, I must talk to him. Do you wish him gone forever?”

“Of course not!”

“Because I guarantee that he is packing a bag at this very moment and calculating the soonest coach he can take out of town.”

“He wouldn’t leave me without saying goodbye,” Yuri says.

Victor laughs, pained and bitter, “He left me at the altar without a word, I see little evidence to persuade the both of us that he would act otherwise.”

There is a moment of silence and then the hiss of a whisper too low for Yuuri to hear.

“If I can find out why he left, perhaps I can give him a reason to stay.”

Yuuri doubts there is any explanation that would make him stay somewhere where he is a novelty rather than a person. But perhaps the truth will allow him to leave with the scraps of his dignity and a pale imitation of peace of mind.

Something wet falls onto his hand where he’s paused in the middle of folding his summer cloak. He raises a hand to his face and finds his cheeks streaked with tears. He did not even realize that he was crying.

Victor’s speech must have persuaded Yuri to let him by, for he appears in Yuuri’s doorway as disheveled as Yuuri’s ever seen him.

“Yuuri? Darling?”

Yuuri does not look up from his valise, hastily crammed with garments. The wrinkles will be terribly difficult to remove later but they are a pittance, mere drops of in the expanse of an ocean, when compared to the difficulty Yuuri will have in mending his heart.

“Do not call me that. Please.” Yuuri will not be reduced to begging but that does not mean he is not veering dangerously close to that path.

“Call you what? Darling? Yuuri?”

“Either. Both,” Yuuri says, and damn him, he cannot prevent his voice from breaking on the last word.

“I would think my being your fiancé would afford me such liberties, unless that has changed without my knowledge,” Victors says. His tone is light but brittle, the sound of glass tempered just to the point before it splinters.

“Do not pretend to be as broken up about this as I am, I do not wish to hear more honeyed words slide from your lips. I should have known you were a serpent rather than an angel.”

“The only lies here are your accusations. In what world would my love for you be a lie? Unless you’ve lied about your person for our entire acquaintance, I should think the only lie would be your name, it is far more difficult for me to believe the worst of your sensibilities. And, should your name be a lie, I must confess I should love you regardless.”

“In what universe could that possibly be true,” Yuuri sobs, tears splashing into his valise as he hugs his arms around his person, in attempt to keep himself together physically even as he falls to pieces.

“In this one. And the next one. And the one after that. In any and all universes, I will love you with all that I am and with all that I could hope to be.”

Yuuri remains hunched over his suitcase, small and stilled. “But it does not make sense that you wish to marry me.”

“Darling,” Victor says. He places a fingertip just below the point of Yuuri’s chin, softer than a butterfly’s wing, “what does not make sense is why you could wish to marry me?”

At that, Yuuri finds himself shocked out of his sobs, “How could you say such a thing?”

“How could _you_ , when I find myself wondering the exact same thing? At times, when we part at your door, I find myself staring at it long after it’s closed, wondering if this will be the night you’ll come to your senses now that you’re out of my sight.”

“ _Victor—“_ Yuuri croaks, folding himself into the warm embrace of Victor’s arms.

 _“_ You have a family and yet no obligations to tie you to any one place, you could adventure as far and as long as you would choose, and yet, here you are giving up all of that freedom for me, for an estate that already possesses an heir.” 

“The only parts of Thornfield I care for are you—you and Yuri.”

“Then you—“

“I thought…I thought you were ashamed. That you wished to hurry our wedding so that your family would not have to suffer my plainness over’long,” Yuuri mutters against Victor’s chest.

Yuuri feels Victor’s next words where his breath brushes against the top of Yuuri’s hair. “Darling. No. I would parade you through Regent’s Park so that the whole Ton might see that you are mine—but…I had to assure myself you were—forever—first.”

Yuuri looks up to meet Victor’s eyes. He lifts a hand to Victor’s lashes and is surprised to find them wet. “You’re crying.”

“The man I love above all others almost left me, of course I am. Did you not think me capable?”

“I did not think it should hurt you as much as it would hurt me.”

“Please, promise me you will not think such things any longer.”

Yuuri leans up to place a shy, hesitant kiss to the tip of Victor’s nose. “I cannot promise I will not think them, but I shall do my best not to believe them.”

“Then I will spend the rest of our lives providing you all the proof to do so.”

Yuuri buries his face in Victor’s chest once more, contenting himself to listen to the beat of Victor’s heart, marching in time with his own.

“Are the guests still waiting?” Yuuri says, after some time has passed.

“Most likely,” Victor replies. He does not seem in any hurry to join them.

"Victor?" 

"Hmm?"

"Why did that man interrupt?"

Victor exhales, producing a sound that is not quite a laugh. "That was my guardian, Yakov—he was cross that, due to my haste to be married, he almost missed the ceremony." 

Yuuri lets out a watery chuckle. “Should we—are—would it be best to proceed with the ceremony?”

Victor peels his body away from Yuuri’s to peer down at him, “If that is what you wish.”

“I wish to be married to you.”

“Would you prefer an audience, or just the two of us?”

“I think I should like to be alone with you at once.”

“Then, darling, the carriage is ready and waiting. And Gretna Green is four days ride, but in your company, it shall seem no more than an hour.”

“Then let us go at once,” Yuuri says, and never before has he seen so wide a smile grace Victor’s features. He steals a kiss in the quiet—a moment for just the two of them, an ‘I do’ no one else needs bear witness.

In quiet, companionable silence, Yuuri smooths out the items in his valise, assuring himself that he has packed enough enough to last four days of travel twice over. They descend the kitchen stairs hand in hand, towards where the coach is waiting. Victor’s palm is warm and slightly damp—and Yuuri squeezes Victor’s palm against his own. They are both just as excited, just as nervous, and they are prepared to share those feelings for the rest of their lives.

Victor slides his valet an inordinately heavy purse to announce their arrival only an hour after they’ve departed. Yuuri looks out the window at the ever distant form of Thornfield Hall and thinks that upon his return, he’ll truly be able to call it his home.

**Author's Note:**

> robbie, u the real mvp <333


End file.
